


to things not being normal (to life being full)

by Crystalinastar



Series: The Road to Crisis [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: (it's Oliver. talking about himself not being as good as barry and kara), Fear of Death, Friendship, Gen, Gratuitous Use of Talking About Feelings, Hugs, Mentions of Canonical(?) Future Character Death, Oliver Queen's Respect for Barry Allen, Rated T for language, Talking, Unreliable Narrator, Which Happens to Coincide with Non-Respect for His Own Heroic Deeds, i think?? maybe there's not but I'm slapping the rating on to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 11:45:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21457528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crystalinastar/pseuds/Crystalinastar
Summary: Two heroes sit at a bar and contemplate their fates.-Set sometime after Arrow 8x02 but before 8x04.
Relationships: Barry Allen & Oliver Queen
Series: The Road to Crisis [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1564798
Comments: 12
Kudos: 50





	to things not being normal (to life being full)

“What do you need, Barry?” Oliver asks, sitting down at the familiar bar.

“What?” Barry responds, his foot tapping slowing down. “Can’t a hero just sit and chat with another hero?”

Oliver snorts. “Not in this line of work.” _Not with the end coming so close._

Barry sobers in that moment. Oliver supposes his tone ended a tad more grave than he would’ve liked it to be. “Yeah, I… I needed advice. And help. Maybe.”

His mind scans through what Barry potentially needs. He doesn’t have much time left; he’ll do what he can. A small voice in him notes that Barry sounds too serious, too downtrodden, too hopeless for the usually hope_ful_ hero. 

“What’s going on?”

Barry launches into an explanation of what’s been going on. Like heroes tend to, he’s had a rough go at it. Oliver flinches when Barry tells him his daughter from the future died—heartbreaking, but also a really fucking weird situation. There are the Godspeeds (also from the future apparently, as if Oliver hasn’t seen enough of that), the Ramsey Rosso situation, so many things.

And then he says the Monitor visited him. 

He blinks. And blinks again to make sure what he heard was real. It is. 

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The Monitor,” Barry repeats slowly. Barry has a tendency to do that around him when they’re spending time together off-duty, like he thinks he’s going too fast. Oliver briefly wonders whether he can tell, or if it feels normal to him and it’s the rest of the world that’s going at the wrong speed. “He showed me the—you remember the future article, right? The one that said I would…” His eyes drop. “Disappear?”

Oliver nods. Last time he saw it, it read Julie Greer in the byline. Iris is alive, obviously, so it’s likely different from what he remembers.

“It changed. Again.” Called it. “The date, this time. It said I would vanish, um. This year.” Hold up. Backtrack just a little. 

“_What_?”

Barry smiles fleetingly, more of a “I’m fine, it’s not that bad” smile than a “I’m joking! This is one big prank for dying Oliver” smile. Even so, his face returns to grimness—which settles on it just as easily as his grins—fast. “Turns out I sacrifice myself to stop everyone else from dying.”

No. _No_. That’s Oliver’s job. Goddamnit, Barry’s not supposed to die!

“You come back, right?” Oliver says, his throat tightening. 

Silence comes from the speedster so talkative Oliver often describes him as a running mouth. “I don’t think so,” Barry replies finally. “I tried looking for it and there was just—red. So, so much red.” His gaze unfocuses. Oliver knows from experience he’s recalling something traumatic. Why can’t the universe just give Barry Allen a break?

Barry fidgets with the hem of his shirt, which is pointedly blue. “The antimatter, the one that kills everyone, is red. And I saw a billion timelines where it happens, and there’s only one where we win. The one where I sacrifice myself to save _so many people_, Ollie.” His voice cracks and his eyes water, but Oliver can’t help but admire Barry’s strength.

Barry has gone through trauma to trauma, from the one when he was eleven to seeing a _billion fucking timelines_ of people dying. Of Barry himself dying. And yet, he’s a better man than Oliver. He wears his shiny golden lightning bolt with pride, and he’s so young. So fragile. 

Oliver knows what to do. He opens his arms and embraces the younger man who had eventually become his equal.

No, that’s not right. He’s dancing around it. 

Let him try again.

Oliver Queen _hugs_ Barry Allen. 

Barry Allen, who represents all that is good in the world. Someone who came out of death and despair fighting for every last scrap of hope he could get. It is moments like this where Oliver knows he’s done the right thing. The world needs people like Barry and Kara than it does people like him. 

Oliver hugs him, not like someone who’s afraid for their life, but like someone who has accepted that this is the end of the line. Barry said it himself, it’s happening this year. And they only have one chance to stop it. 

“I don’t wanna go,” Barry whispers into Oliver’s shoulder. “I don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna leave everyone behind.”

“You’re a good man, Barry,” Oliver says because he doesn’t know what else to say. What do you say when it comes to this?

The moment echoes into time and space, coming back to him in waves, in surges of emotion and even breathing intertwined. It lasts forever, but only a second. 

Barry slips out of his arms, chuckling to himself. It should sound hollow. It doesn’t. “You hugged me.”

“No, I didn’t.” His frown twitches upwards.

“You did!”

Oliver sighs, long and dramatic. “Fine,” he admits. “I did. Happy?”

“Very.” 

He’s going to have some strong words with the Mar Novu next time he sees that bastard. He needs to know if his sacrifice meant something, if it was all just a set up for Barry to still die in the end. For that matter, if _Kara_ is going to make a similar sacrifice. 

“You’re thinking about something,” Barry deduces. “Tell me. Or, don’t if you don’t feel like it. How’s Team Arrow? I don’t think you guys have made the news for a little bit. How’s Felicity?”

Oliver winces.

“Oh, shit. Relationship problems?” 

“No,” Oliver feels the need to say. “We’re fine. I think. And she’s fine, I think.”

Somewhat hard to tell when he hadn’t seen her in months, _thanks again Mar Novu_.

Barry narrows his eyes. His analytical gaze sharply reminds Oliver that Barry was a CSI before the Flash. The man before the hero, though in Oliver’s case, it’s the hero before the man. “You haven’t seen her?”

“I…” Oliver’s instinctive lies catch in his throat. “I haven’t.”

“Why not?” Barry presses, his stance open and curious but his eyes flooded with concern.

“The Monitor visited me, too,” Oliver admits, and the rest comes spilling out like his hair when he was on Lian Yu. 

At the end, Barry’s mouth is agape. “Holy shit… Earth-2… I…” He shakes his head furiously. His words sound watery. “What about Harry? Jesse?”

Oliver refrains from asking who they are, instead relenting to the fact that Barry’s life is weird. “As far as we know, Black Siren is the only survivor of Earth-2.”

Barry looks heartbroken. For him, every loss is a loss that could’ve been prevented, every loss is one that affected people, if not him. And from the looks of it, this one did affect him. 

“I’m sorry,” Oliver says.

“No, it’s fine,” Barry insists. He’s not, but Oliver isn’t either, so it would be hypocritical to point it out. “I’m fine. I just have to tell my team. What about you, man? You’re gonna _die_.”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Oliver says. His life is a microscopic price to pay for a multiverse.

Barry is looking elsewhere, clearly thinking. “How many people have to die for us to win? I thought it was just me, but what if it’s Kara? What if it’s Sara, or—or Batwoman?”

He doesn’t have an answer for that. Oliver used to pride himself on having an answer for everything, but lately, the universe has been throwing him curveballs.

“We don’t know,” he replies. “When the time comes, we’ll find out. But we have to fight our damned hardest to save everyone.”

Barry nods slowly. “Cheers to that.”

“Cheers.”

Out of the blue, Barry laughs, bringing levity in, to this absurdly somber moment like he does best. “I have to have sex with Iris, like, _now_.”

Oliver blinks. And blinks again, because did he really hear that?

“To make Nora,” Barry explains quickly. “So Iris won’t be alone.”

He closes his eyes and exhales. When he opens his eyes, he’s finally able to say, “That’s the most acceptable reason for sex I’ve ever heard, and trust me, I’ve had a lot of it.”

“Oh, I know.” Barry honest-to-god waggles his eyebrows, and Oliver allows himself to snort at himself.

A beat of silence passes. Oliver’s thoughts are drawn to the impending crisis. If Barry’s newspaper date is any good, then it won’t even be two months before it arrives. How much time does Mar Novu need for… whatever he’s planning? Because it has to be very, very little.

“I can’t believe I’m going to die saving the multiverse,” Barry says. “I mean, I knew, but I didn’t think…”

Oliver raises an eyebrow. “If there’s anyone I could imagine dying to save the multiverse, it’s you.”

“Says you,” Barry mutters. He holds up his mug of beer. “This could be the last time we talk before it happens. Wanna say anything?”

“Cheers to dying in the craziest way you could ever imagine?” Oliver sarcastically remarks. He sees the gears in Barry’s brain turning. “Don’t try to come up with a crazier way, I’ll come up with another one. A toast…” He thinks about what’s going to become important as time runs out. “A toast to family—families that have been ours all along. And to goodbyes, that we may have them before we leave.”

He and Barry clink glasses, and Oliver takes a swig of the beer. He’s so, so glad he’s not the Flash with his stupid alcohol immunity thing. Worst power ever.

“And,” Barry adds, the cheeky little shit, “a toast to dying in the _fifth_ craziest way imaginable.”

“What—” Oliver stops. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

“You don’t,” Barry chimes. His gaze softens. “Thanks, Ollie, for coming out here to see me. I know, I know, don’t call you that.”

“You know me,” Oliver warns jokingly. “But I’ll let you. Just this once.”

“Is the great Oliver Queen—” Barry pauses for dramatic effect, “—going _soft_ on me?”

“You tell anyone and I kill you,” Oliver growls.

Barry doesn’t answer, instead grinning widely. He spreads his arms wide.

“No,” Oliver says.

Barry presses closer for the hug anyways. “I’m gonna miss you, man,” he says, his voice holding no shortage of the classic Barry Allen love.

Oliver’s eyes fog up. “Yeah,” he responds. “Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> I just had to get this out there before Crisis. I have,, Feelings about their friendship, like Big Feelings(TM). I just love the mutual respect that slowly turned into true friendship and camaraderie?? added to the fact that they both think they're about to die?? if we don't get a proper conversation between these two before Crisis starts I'm gonna scream (not like. the episodes, but the crisis-Crisis, you feel?)
> 
> please, give kudos and comments if you enjoyed!!


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